This year, the Annual Alumni Band Day is Saturday, Oct. 18, and returning members will perform alongside current students in a show highlighting the iconic music and formations made famous during the tenure of Vincent R. DiNino, director of bands emeritus, who died in September.George Moxley, a member of the Longhorn Alumni Band said he’s glad alumni from across the decades are coming together this year to honor DiNino, who “made the Longhorn Band the Showband of the Southwest.”

“Longhorn Band itself is a family,” Moxley says. “We have people from back in the ’30s and ’40s who come to these Alumni Band things. You get to meet people from all different eras.”

Moxley, who played trumpet in the Longhorn Band from 1968 to 1972, says he gets back into formation each year for the annual alumni performance without too much difficulty.

The key to marching in formation, he says, is to “remember where you’re at in the music with where you need to stop. Once you’ve done it that long, it becomes kind of second nature to you,” Moxley says. “We have charts showing us what the formations look like, and we kind of follow the leader.”

Longhorn Band Director Robert Carnochan says he’s always impressed to see how quickly the Alumni Band members warm up for the performances. It only “takes a few hours” before they’re ready to take the field.

“The Alumni Band,” Carnochan says, “is an absolutely show of how important the Longhorn Band is to the members who are a part of it.”

The Alumni Band doesn’t stop supporting the current Longhorn Band when the former students leave the field after annual performances. The group uses an endowment fund to award as much as $50,000 in scholarships to some of the band’s current 381 student members.

“They give back,” Carnochan says of the Alumni Band. “It’s a sign of the great friendships people build.”

Have you ever wondered how to play an instrument and be part of a football-field-sized TEXAS at the same time?

Longhorn Band members take on this challenge each week during football season. They’ve got to know not only the music in every halftime program but precisely where they need to march, turn and stand to form a giant TEXAS or Longhorn silhouette or even an airplane — all without missing a note.

The key to knowing your location in a formation, as it turns out, is seeing the field as a grid and knowing how to march in specific “step sizes” while playing music. These fundamental skills are imparted to band members before they even arrive on the Forty Acres.

“They’re trained when they’re in high school to know all of these varying step sizes,” says Robert Carnochan, director of the Longhorn Band, which is based in the Butler School of Music. “This gets drilled into them for four years straight.”

Carnochan says Texas high schools have the best bands in the country, giving students a strong knowledge foundation when they arrive here. Even some complicated aspects, like using the “eight-to-five” stride — taking eight marching steps for every five yards — are second nature to the band members.

Instead of seeing the field with changing yard lines, the students divide it into a grid by different step sizes and can seamlessly shift between eight-to-five, the 30-inch stride of six-to-five and other step sizes. Photo by Jerry Hayes Photography.

Point to any spot on the field — even places between hash marks and yard lines — and the student performers can say how many steps that spot is from the closest markings.

Each member of the marching band has a dot sheet to help them know where they’re supposed to be on the field. Photo by Nicholas Persac.

To stay on course, Jason Anthraper, an electrical engineering senior who plays tuba, says he focuses on the music and, in his mind, pairs the band’s sound and his upcoming notes with the shifting formations. Anthraper, who also serves as a section leader in the band, says breaking the football field into a grid helps the marchers stay on track.

To bridge the students’ backgrounds with newly created formations and show designs, the marchers use “dot sheets,” or slips of paper about the size of a business card, to know where to be and when.

The sheets appear cryptic, with longitude and latitude like codes communicating the shifting formations to those who can decipher the plan. Erin McAtee, a senior studying biology and Spanish who plays piccolo in the Longhorn Band, says using “dot sheets” helps members visualize how an individual part fits into the whole show.

“Some people are going to be more technical with it,” says McAtee, who is also president of The Longhorn Band Student Association and serves as a section leader. “But we all put in a lot of memorization.”

Watch and listen to Band director Robert Carnochan explain the complex formations performed in November of 2012 in honor of Veterans’ Day.

The source of those coordinates and dot sheets is a computer program developed by a Longhorn Band alumnus. Pyware is the industry standard for collegiate marching bands across the country. Py Kolb, the creator, majored in computer science at UT during the late 1970s and played trombone in the band.

Kolb’s Pyware software helped band directors evolve from the large graphing paper they previously used to individually plot marchers in slightly shifting formations, page after page — like a cartoon flipbook.

When Anthony Marinello, Longhorn Band assistant director, arrived at the university in 2009, he wanted to make the iconic Longhorns silhouette logo sharper and snazzier. He spent three days using Pyware to meticulously plot where band members start and shaping how the logo’s outline should form. That refreshed formation is now part of the band’s iconic repertoire.

That traditional formation began in the 1950s under the reign of one of Longhorn Band’s most beloved leaders, Vincent R. DiNino, director of the Longhorn Band from 1955 to 1975. (DiNino died in September and will be honored during halftime on Oct. 18 and at a memorial celebration on Oct. 19. See sidebar below for more information.)

“Wall-to-Wall is really our signature,” Carnochan says. “If another band did that, people would say, ‘You guys stole that from Texas.’”

The iconic Wall-to-Wall Band formation. This year, 381 students are members of Longhorn Band, and 95 percent of the band’s members are from Texas. Among the entire band, 84 students are studying engineering, while 47 are music majors. The other most common degree paths among band members include biology (34), business (22) and computer science (22). Photo by Jerry Hayes Photography.

During a recent rehearsal in “The Bubble” (aka, the Denius Indoor Practice Facility), band members march in sharp lines, taking even strides while forming shifting shapes. But instead of donning the famous western-style, burnt orange uniforms, the students wear T-shirts and gym shorts in arrays of colors and sport carpenters’ fanny packs stuffed with sheet music and marching directions.

Carnochan walks among the students signaling for the lines to be straighter, Marinello and Scott Hanna, the band’s associate director, watch for imperfections from a platform that gives him a vantage point comparable to some stadium seats, and a team of graduate students stands on ladders and watches from the sideline, policing for even the slightest missteps.

“Instruments are up. Feet are together. Make this better,” instructs Marinello, watching the rehearsal from the platform. “Same thing,” he commands.

“Same thing, mo’ betta!” the band shouts in response. Then the performers return to starting positions and start the drill over from the top.

The Longhorn Band rehearses in “The Bubble.” The undergraduate members have a lot of influence over the music being played and a show theme, but creating for formations is typically left to the band’s faculty and graduate students. Photo by Jerry Hayes Photography.

These formal rehearsals are only part of the practice students put into being a member of the Longhorn Band. Between full-band practices, tests with section leaders and practicing in free time, the students expect to put in at least 10 hours of practice every week on top of the 11 or 12 hours required for every home game.

Though personal strengths vary among the band’s 381 members, many agree playing the music is harder than the marching, mainly because of the large quantity of the music, the tunes’ complexities and the perfection expected by the band’s student and faculty leaders.

J. J. Vernon, an electrical engineering junior who plays tuba, says marching and making the formations is “like riding a bike.” With a little patience, members can pick up new formations with ease.

DiNino, who served as director of the Longhorn Band from 1955 to 1975 and then as director of bands until 1985, helped push the band to its current heights.

He oversaw some of the band’s most recognizable traditions, from the “Wall-to-Wall Band” and “Script Texas” formations and playing March Grandioso, to Big Bertha’s presence and wearing western-style burnt orange uniforms.

DiNino also opened the band to both women and minorities, and he touched the lives of thousands of students during his tenure.

“He didn’t wait to be told what to do,” says Robert Carnochan, the Longhorn Band’s director. “He went ahead and did what he knew was the right thing.”

Junior competitor Paul Kropfitsch, 13, from Austria performs “The Cowboy and the Rattlesnake,” an original composition by Butler School faculty member Dan Welcher, during the first round of competition on Monday, Feb. 24. [Video by Marsha Miller]

Competition judging can appear to be a baffling, highly technical endeavor to non-expert outsiders. Judges watch a performance by a figure skater or platform diver or pianist, scrutinize form and record detailed numerical scores.

But at the Menuhin Competition, the pre-eminent international competition for young violinists being held at UT this week, technical excellence is expected; it’s a given for the field of 42 contestants from around the world.

The expert panel of Menuhin judges (in this case, called jurors) are listening for something that even an untrained music fan can spot: the “goose bump” factor.

“Who moves you? That’s what the jury is looking for,” explained Sandy Yamamoto, a former member of UT’s acclaimed Miró Quartet. Yamamoto and Menuhin Competition artistic director Gordon Back gave a talk Tuesday called “The Juror’s Ear,” sharing their insights with a roomful of contestants, parents and enthusiasts at the Butler School of Music.

“For most competitions, there’s a more complex scoring system, like the Olympics, where computers are involved, and percentages are involved, averages are involved,” Yamamoto said. But the Menuhin jurors are making a simple choice.

“Really, all the judges do is check, YES, I want this contestant to go through, or NO, I don’t think this contestant should go through,” she said.

In essence, Back explained, they’re asking themselves, “Would you buy a ticket to see this person perform a second time?”

Performing is one thing the Menuhin jurors share in common with the young contestants they’re evaluating. All nine members of the international panel — including Anton Nel, professor of piano and chamber music, and Brian Lewis, professor of violin, at the Butler School — are current performers rather than professional judges who move from competition to competition. And at points throughout the 10-day event, the jurors perform alongside the contestants.

“It really puts the jury members and the contestants on an even playing level,” said Yamamoto, also a member of the Butler School’s faculty. “It feels like this is a festival where we’re sharing the love and joy of music; and it’s not so much, ‘We are the jury members, you are the contestants. Now you will play for me.’”

The jury members also offer master classes during the competition, giving contestants access to coaching from some of the world’s top performers.

“You’re meeting your future colleagues, you’re meeting the people you might be working with one day,” Yamamoto said.

By Sunday’s closing gala concert, the jurors will have chosen winners — after all, that is their job — but during their time in Austin, they will be joining the contestants and the audience in the celebration of music.

Home page image by Daniel Cavazos. Menuhin Competition junior division winner Kevin Zhu performs with the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra during the opening concert at the Long Center on Feb. 21.

It’s been referred to as the Olympics of violin competitions. Formula One for fine arts. The Van Cliburn Competition for the string set. In other words, a very big deal.

On Feb. 21 the university welcomes 42 of the world’s best violinists to campus for an intense 10-day competition with $10,000 and international reputation at stake. One note of distinction: the competitors are kids.

The competition has an impressive track record of counting some of the world’s most gifted violinists among its participants and prizewinners, with many establishing major international careers.

The public is invited to attend the competition rounds in addition to concerts, masterclasses, community activities and speaking events, ranging from the “Art of the Violin” given by violin-maker and restorer Charles R. Ervin, to the career-focused “Soloist, Concertmaster or Chamber Musician?” panel discussion given by the Menuhin jury. The competition will culminate with a performance by the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra. There are both free and ticketed events.

Details about the 2014 competition and a full listing of events can be found at violinatx.org.

*Ok, while we can’t actually say “world’s largest” definitively, a reasonable online search did not turn up proof of another class that tops it. So we’re claiming it.

Like Introduction to Globalization, Ideas of the Twentieth Century and others before it, the Jazz Appreciation MOOC will be hosted by edX, an online nonprofit learning initiative whose other members include Harvard, MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, Wellesley College and Georgetown University.

Students can audit the course or participate in all the course activities and pass an evaluation to earn a certificate.

Considered to be America’s greatest original art form, jazz music is notable for innovation, creativity, and a close relationship with societal transformation. From the course description:

Jazz emerged during a time of tremendous change and upheaval in American society; this course will discuss how its evolution both reflected and contributed to those changes.

Much more than a lecture series, Jazz Appreciation weaves in musical performances and examples that will deepen your understanding of the musical process and develop your ability to identify and analyze different jazz eras and great jazz soloists. It also incorporates cutting-edge adaptive learning technology that will allow you to practice your new knowledge and skills, at your own pace, until you reach mastery.

Join this course to enhance your enjoyment of jazz by developing an informed understanding and deep appreciation of the art.

Hellmer is director of Jazz Studies in the Butler School of Music, is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor and a two-time finalist in the Great American Jazz Piano Competition. Graduate students Alex Heitlinger, Gianni Bianchini and Daniel Dufour will join Hellmer as instructors.

In the spring of 2011, a group of Austinites led by philanthropist Teresa Lozano Long approached The University of Texas School of Law for help forming a new music education nonprofit. Long and her husband Joe, a 1956 Law School graduate, had famously helped underwrite the Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin, which opened in 2008. Now, she hoped to broaden the complexion of the audiences that her namesake institution attracted and expand access to the performing arts for underserved communities.

“What we were looking to do was to find a way to engage the community, and not the community that already attends the ballet or the symphony,” said Teresa Villaseñor-Harris, an Austin attorney and one of Long’s collaborators on the project. “I don’t know if you’ve been to the symphony lately, but if you sit there and look out at the audience, they seem to be 50-plus years old. We’re looking to build new audiences among the population that is becoming the majority in Austin — demographics show that young Hispanics will be the majority in just a couple of years — and help bring young people from that community into the world of the performing arts, a world they don’t always have as much access to as more privileged communities do.”

The recent era of public education budget cuts and test-oriented curricula has not been kind to arts education programs. The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) estimated in 2007 that student access to music education had dropped 20 percent because of the No Child Left Behind Act. This decline is felt most acutely in lower-income neighborhood schools, where students may have the most to gain from music education. Schools with music education programs have a graduation rate 17 percent higher than those without such programs, according to a 2006 NAfME study.

“We were there basically from day one of the organization,” said Bill Podurgiel, a 2011 graduate who volunteered with HAPA as a law student in the Clinic and is now a corporate associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York. “They had ideas in mind of what they wanted to achieve. We assisted them in putting in place the legal structure to achieve those goals. As their goals evolved, we were there to counsel them on what direction they might want to go in.”

As HAPA prepared to offer programming, the organization’s legal needs expanded. Its first program, Austin Soundwaves, is modeled on the world-famous El Sistemapedagogy of Venezuelan economist and musician José Antonio Abreu. El Sistema develops community orchestras for children from early grade school onward. In Venezuela, the pedagogy follows a national curriculum and can require more than 20 hours a week of training and rehearsal. It has produced such classical music stars as Gustavo Dudamel, the young and charismatic conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. El Sistema has recently taken the United States by storm, with growing programs in most major cities, usually in lower-income areas.

HAPA had the opportunity to hire a program leader who had trained specifically in El Sistema methodology as an Abreu fellow at the New England Conservatory of Music. The group also brought in graduate students from The University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music to teach instrument lessons. Hiring the staff brought new legal challenges for fall 2011 Community Development Clinic volunteers. Law students worked with HAPA on an employee handbook to address basic employment law issues.

Less than a year after Villaseñor-Harris first approached the Community Development Clinic, UT Law students were able to attend the program launch.

“They got into the schools earlier than they’d thought,” said Allyson Boney, class of 2012, who worked with HAPA at the Clinic that semester. “They’d been hoping to get in by the spring, but in fall 2011 they had a launch at the charter school. They showed a video about El Sistema. It was really neat to see the people get up and talk about the work that they were going to do. It was like, ‘OK, this is why we’ve spent all this time preparing legal advice for the nonprofit.’”

The Austin Soundwaves program launched at East Austin College Prep, a charter school in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood. Instruments are loaned to students at no charge, and instruction and practices are held five days a week. The program currently serves 62 students, with plans to expand.

By spring 2012, law student volunteers in the Community Development Clinic were no longer working with a startup; they were troubleshooting the day-to-day legal problems of a fully functioning music education nonprofit.

Teresa Long says she is excited by the pace at which HAPA has developed, thanks in part to the Law School’s contributions.

“It’s refreshing to see the successes we are already having,” she said. “We hope to continue to grow this program and ultimately be a key player in helping keep the arts alive in Austin well into the future. We could not have launched this program without the partnership and support of the University of Texas, including the support of the Law School. We are so appreciative of and grateful to UT.”

UT Law students, for their part, are grateful for the educational opportunity. More than one has expressed a desire to work with organizations such as HAPA in their law careers.

“Getting to work with an organization that has such a clear mission and has accomplished so much in such a short amount of time inspired me to continue working with nonprofits that are really well-organized and ambitious,” said Joseph Delgado, class of 2012, who grew up in Austin and was excited to give back to his community by volunteering with HAPA during the spring.

“Heather [Way] and the other clinic instructors have done an amazing job providing students with the tools necessary to succeed by teaching a broad but practical business law and general law practice curriculum,” said Podurgiel. “And they follow this with an excellent balance between mentoring and giving students lots of responsibility and the opportunity to apply those tools through substantive hands-on work with an interesting array of clients.”

The biggest winners are the children of East Austin, who have a new opportunity to engage with great music and to be part of something larger than themselves. During the spring, they played concerts around the city, including at the Long Center. Way and Delgado attended, among other Law School representatives.

HAPA has been documenting its progress, posting videos to YouTube of its young orchestra from the very earliest stages, including at five weeks and nine weeks.

“To play those two, and then to play the concert we had last week at Bates Concert Hall, and watch those together, you say to yourself, ‘You know, we’ve really done something here,’ ” said Villaseñor-Harris.

“You can tell that they’re playing ‘Ode to Joy,’ ” she said. “To go from ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ to ‘Ode to Joy’ — I sat there and got goose bumps to hear them make that transformation. And the smiles on their faces and the faces of their parents — my God. They filled the Bates Concert Hall.”

]]>http://www.utexas.edu/know/2012/08/08/expanding-austins-soundwaves/feed/0Tower shines orange tonighthttp://www.utexas.edu/know/2011/12/02/tower_orange_lewis/
http://www.utexas.edu/know/2011/12/02/tower_orange_lewis/#commentsFri, 02 Dec 2011 12:00:11 +0000University Communicationshttp://www.utexas.edu/know/?p=22625The Tower at The University of Texas at Austin will shine orange the evening of Friday, Dec. 2 in recognition of Professor William Lewis, who will be appointed to the rank of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters), France’s prestigious order created by Charles de Gaulle in the 1950s.

]]>http://www.utexas.edu/know/2011/12/02/tower_orange_lewis/feed/4Songs of the Season: Experience the sights and soundshttp://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/12/09/songs_of_the_season/
http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/12/09/songs_of_the_season/#commentsThu, 09 Dec 2010 21:21:27 +0000csmurreyhttp://www.utexas.edu/know/?p=16842Songs of the Season, a holiday event at The University of Texas at Austin, traditionally brings together students, faculty and staff to celebrate the holiday season and the generosity of people who have contributed to the university’s Orange Santa gift program.

Songs of the Season, held this year on Dec. 3, featured choral organizations from the Butler School of Music and the Tower Singers, a staff organization. In preparation for the Holiday Store, Orange Santa and many volunteers were present to accept donations and fill a replica of the university Tower with toys.

The annual event concluded this year’s Orange Santa donation drive.

Orange Santa began in 1994 as a program to foster a more caring university environment by providing help for members of the university community who have special needs during the holiday season.

]]>http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/12/09/songs_of_the_season/feed/0Extraordinary Exes: Billy Ray Hunter and Karen Elliott Househttp://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/07/01/extraordinary_exes_hunter_house/
http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/07/01/extraordinary_exes_hunter_house/#commentsThu, 01 Jul 2010 20:44:35 +0000Marjorie Smithhttp://www.utexas.edu/know/?p=11241To celebrate its 125th anniversary, the Texas Exes asked its members to share their stories, showing that what starts here truly changes the world. During the next few weeks, Know will feature 12 stories that show why these alums deserve the title “Extraordinary Exes.”

Billy Ray Hunter, Bachelor of Music, 1997

Billy Ray Hunter came from humble beginnings on Austin’s east side, and while still in his 20s became one of the top trumpeters in East Austin.

Now as principal trumpet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, Hunter holds one of the highest orchestral positions in the world at age 35, and remains one of only three African Americans in the 95-member orchestra.

In the years before he “hit it big time,” Hunter was a struggling musician. He played show tunes at Disney World before breaking into orchestras in Boston, Dallas, Baltimore and beyond. He maxed out his credit cards en route to Miami to audition for the New World Symphony.

In spite of his challenges, Hunter’s climb is a story of personal discipline and mentor intervention. “I always had teachers who saw potential,” he said. Hunter is a recipient of the Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award and was presented this year with the annual Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Karen Elliott House, Bachelor of Journalism, 1970

A native Texas girl, Karen Elliott House grew up in a town of 900 in a house with no telephone or television. From those unlikely beginnings, she went on to travel the world, win a Pulitzer Prize and rank on Forbes’ list of Most Powerful Women.

A journalism education from the university started House on the path that would lead her to a 32-year career focused on international affairs at The Wall Street Journal. She served as the storied paper’s foreign editor, and later, publisher. Along the way, House won a 1984 Pulitzer Prize for an extraordinary series of interviews with Jordan’s King Hussein — a series that correctly anticipated the problems the Reagan administration would face with its Middle East peace process.

Since retiring from the journal, House has become a senior Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and is working on a forthcoming book about Saudi Arabia.

]]>http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/07/01/extraordinary_exes_hunter_house/feed/0Hitting the high notes with Charles Ballhttp://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/05/04/hitting-the-high-notes/
http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/05/04/hitting-the-high-notes/#commentsTue, 04 May 2010 21:08:54 +0000Marsha Millerhttp://www.utexas.edu/know/?p=9473Piano-tuning maestro Charles Ball has been hitting the high notes for 30 years as the head piano technician in the Butler School of Music. From an early age, Ball has been fascinated by the inner workings of pianos and had dreamed of one day working in music, with a fleet of fine instruments that he would prepare for concert performances.

Ball reflects on having realized his dream: a long career working with the finest instruments and the best pianists, from first-year music students to some of the greatest piano virtuosos in the world.

With the motto “UT works because staff work,” Staff Appreciation Week is an opportunity for members of the university community to show appreciation for the hard work and commitment of university staff.